


There Will Come Soft Rains

by Brighid



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Episode related: S2p2, M/M, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 04:18:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/793886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, in the rain, it all comes clean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Will Come Soft Rains

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Points if you can e-mail me back with the poet whose poem I nicked the title from. Since it's about a healing rain in the wake of destruction, I though it applied.

## There Will Come Soft Rains

by Brighid

Author's disclaimer: They're not mine. They belong to Pet Fly, UPN, Paramount and a whole bunch of others who don't love 'em nearly enough.

* * *

Jesus. It's raining. I come to a country where the average temperature makes hell feel frosty, and it starts to rain. That is just so my luck, man. 

I'm goddamned sick of being wet. I never want to be wet again. Which doesn't even begin to explain why I'm pacing in the hotel courtyard, letting a sudden rainstorm soak me to the bone. I lift my face up to the downpour, and wonder if I could drown this way, but it's a moot point, really. Inside, where it really counts, I'm still going down for the third time. 

We're catching a plane home tomorrow, but for tonight we're back in our hotel. Megan and Simon have each got their own rooms, but for some reason they've put me in with Jim. In his room, with one bed. I'm not sure who decided on that; I just know they sure as hell didn't ask me. 

It's not like we haven't bunked together before. Time, trouble and temperature have all forced us to cozy up on occasion. It was always nice, too. I felt safe, y'know, with six feet of Sentinel stretched out alongside me like my own, personal heating pad. The big mook's a snuggler, too, not that you'd expect it under that Joe Friday persona he tries to pull off. If I'm honest, I have to admit that I liked the snuggly part as much as the body heat. I never said I was a proud man. 

I'm not entirely sure if the big guy is, like, totally ignorant of my baser instincts where he's concerned. I do know that he's never let anything give, one way or the other. He's always been ... accepting of the times we had to share, but he never really hinted that it was anything else, anything more. Sometimes, I think there was something in how he looked at me, but I was never sure, so I never said anything. I decided a long time ago that I'd never push on this one. I'm a shit-disturber, but I'm not stupid. 

But now, after all the crap that's gone down, I don't know if I can feel safe beside him. I don't know if I can let my guard down and relax against him and just let him soak into me, because in the morning ... in the morning, I'd still have no idea where I was with him, and it would be like getting kicked out all over again. I don't think I could survive that a second time. 

I mean, yeah, sure, my stuff's all back at his place, but that's part of the problem right there. It's ~my~ stuff at ~his~ place, and I had been letting myself starting to think in terms of ~ours~. Man, that was, like, a huge mistake. You think sixteen years of living with Naomi would have taught me that. Permanence is an illusion, man, and if you let yourself get sucked into it, reality will make a point of biting you on the ass. But he had made me feel ... safe. He made me think it might be ... home. 

"Christ, Chief. You're damned lucky not to have caught pneumonia by accident, and here you are, trying to get it on purpose." I spin around, almost sliding off my feet, to find him standing behind me. I can barely make him out in the rain-soaked shadows; he's just a denser patch of darkness. 

"I thought you were asleep," I reply and it sounds lame in my own ears. The small part of me, the hurting kid part, makes me add, "I didn't think you'd care." 

"You thought wrong." His voice is flat and even, and there is a world of hurt beneath it. "I care. I'm just shitty at saying it and even worse at showing it." He doesn't move at all, just stands there still and silent, as though waiting for me to say something, do something. The distance between us is a gaping wound. 

"She fucking killed me, man," I say at last, my words Sentinel-soft. 

"I know," he replies, his voice thick. 

All of a sudden it makes me angry, so angry that I get dizzy and white spots flare before my eyes. "No, you fucking don't know!" I shout, and lights go on in the hotel. I lower my voice, but the words come out fast and needle-sharp. "You didn't have her crack you on the skull and then hold you under water. You didn't feel it fill your mouth and nose until you'd choke if you could but you can't because you don't have the breath to do it. You didn't thrash and claw until you couldn't see or feel or hear anymore. You didn't feel your soul let go and lose itself in a jungle so dark and deep you knew, just fucking knew, you were lost for good, you weren't getting out ... youdidntyoudidntyoudidnt...." I begin to sob now, crying for the first time since it all started. "Shit, man, you're such an asshole! I died, and all I can think is that it hurt worse being kicked out of the goddamned loft." 

Darkness descends upon me, envelopes me, and after a moment I realize it is because my face is pressed against the wet cloth of his T-shirt. "I'm sorry, Sandburg. It's not enough, but it's everything I've got and it's yours." 

"Bull." I flail against him, shove him away from me. "I thought when I came to in the hospital, after the shared vision, that we were back on track, y'know? That we were, like, finally reconnecting. And then you start having your visions and you go haring off without me on your own personal mission with your own agenda and you don't even goddamned THINK to run it by me, because, hell, your visions never ever affect me, do they, Ellison?" I thrust a finger against the solid wall of his chest, hard enough to bruise. "And next thing I know, your visions become wet dreams and you're all but shagging on the beach at goddamned dawn and she's got a gun on me again and you just let her go!" I tear my hands through my hair, managing to pull a hank out in the process. "We're further apart now then we were before she killed me, because it's painfully obvious that you don't need me, you don't want me and I don't know what the hell I'm doing with you anymore!" I'm very carefully not yelling; you don't have to yell at a Sentinel to make him really feel the words. "And worst of all, the most pathetic of all, is I don't know what the hell I'll do without you." 

The words are quiet, lost in the rain, but he hears them. A heartbeat, maybe two, and he's on the ground in front of me, his arms wrapped around my waist and his body pressed against mine with the seeming intention of occupying the same point in space and time as I am. My arms go around him by instinct; against all reason, my body demands the connection. 

"I'm sorry," his voice is muffled against my chest; I feel it more than hear it. "I've been crazy, and I don't understand what happened or what's happening and I hate not being in control. I always manage to fuck it up, Sandburg. Been fucking it up for forty years." 

I pull one arm back, and grab his chin to force him to look up at me. It comes to me all of a sudden that he's looking older. The lines are deeper than I remembered, starting to reach craggy in places. His hairline has receded and there is the faintest suggestion of a comb-over. Weariness weighs heavily in the puffiness around his eyes, the lines around his mouth. He looks miserable and tired and older than forty, and absolutely beautiful besides. I lean down until my forehead rests against his. 

"Tell me what to do, then, man. Tell me what you want, what you need, what the hell these last few weeks were all about," I whisper. 

I feel him shudder in my arms, and his breath catches on the threat of tears. "I can't lose you Sandburg. I do need you, same way I need my eyes and my hands and my left nut. I just never spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like without you, y'know? Just like you don't think about what it'd be like to go blind ... until you do. And then everything is ... dark. Until you can't get a grasp on anything. Until you're ... aw, fuck, you know what I mean, right?" His voice is a growl and a whine combined, and it almost makes me smile. Words have never been his strength, but he's doing okay. 

"I begin to get the idea, Jim," I concede, and I feel him relax almost imperceptibly against me. "So in other words, you didn't know what you had until it was gone? Doesn't explain the public rutting, though. Or ditching me. Again." For once, I am not going to back down. 

He rubs his forehead against mine, then his nose. "Hell if I know, Sandburg. It would sort of make sense for Sentinels to want to breed, if you think about it, but that's all it was ... like a really bad craving, y'know? Bad enough to drive me crazy, but once I got it down, it didn't sit too good, It was ... wrong. Coulda been right, maybe, if she were somebody else." All the while he's talking, he's nuzzling my face, sniffing me and touching me and maybe even tasting me, as though to prove I'm real. It's making my temperature rise, and I swear I can feel the rain bead and sizzle as it lands. I almost miss his next words, because they are barely even a breath against my face. "Maybe if she was you." 

I push his face away, hold it between my two hands. "Where are we now, Jim? What do you want? Where are we going?" 

He smiles tiredly at me, his eyes halfway between dazed and terrified. "Aw, hell Sandburg. Stop with the questions. Just come to bed. Please." He turns his face in my hands, and I feel his mouth hot and clumsy against the palm of my hand. 

I swallow hard, knowing that he can feel my pulse speed up, hear my breath hitch, smell the shift in my body chemistry as hunger flares through me. "There's only one bed," I remind him. 

"I know," he says, and he kisses my wrist this time, only now there's nothing clumsy about it. "Is that a problem?" His voice is quiet, serious. 

"That depends on what happens in the morning. I'm not gonna let you kick me out again, Jim. Physically, emotionally, metaphorically, any fucking-what-ally. You invite me in tonight, I'm there for life." My voice cracks, and my hands tremble on his face as I start crying again. It's like I've reached some sort of saturation point of wet, and it's gotta come back out one way or another. 

He stands, sliding against me on the way up, and takes my face between his hands. His thumbs sweep over and down, clearing rain and tears away. "I'm beginning to understand that, Chief. It's scary, but it feels good. Like learning to see, all over again." He leans down, and kisses me so hard I think my lip might split, and Jesus, it feels right. It feels like coming home. "Come to bed, Sandburg. Blair," he whispers into my mouth before he pulls away and heads back towards the building. 

I follow him into the hotel, into a strange room and a strange bed. Despite the alien locale,it is a homecoming, the first one I've ever had. Maybe, if we are very, very careful, it will last a lifetime. 

End 


End file.
